Meditations Upon the Sheep
AM Psalm 119:145-176 • PM Psalm 128, 129, 130
Jer. 25:30-38 • Rom. 10:14-21 • John 10:1-18
One of the happiest months of my life was spent living on an organic sheep farm in the middle of Derbyshire, outside of a little village called Kniveton, which largely consisted of a post office/sweet shop, a truly excellent pub, and an old Norman church whose graveyard was dark with ancient yew trees. It was a community of sheep farmers, farmers not very different, in some ways, from the ancient shepherds of the Middle East.
So it was the repeated imagery of sheep and shepherds which really struck me as I read through the passages for today’s readings. Not all sheep imagery is happy or pastoral, as some of the these readings show. At the end of Psalm 119, we hear the mournful tones of the proverbial missing sheep, one of the most poignant recurring images in the Bible “I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost; search for your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.”
There is also an exploration here of the violence which is an uncomfortable but inevitable aspect of the shepherd-sheep relationship. This is clear in Jeremiah’s dire warning: “Wail, you shepherds, and cry out; roll in ashes, you lords of the flock, for the days of your slaughter have come…” One of my most vivid memories of living on that farm was the time I had to help the farmer to gather a flock of sheep to take them to the abattoir…I remember very clearly the way he glanced over at the expression on my face as we worked and said in sympathy, “You’ve got to be hard.” But I am not a hard person, and it was the only time I helped with this activity.
The most emotionally powerful reading for today, however, lies in John, where Jesus meditates on the more positive and nurturing side of the relationship between shepherds and their sheep: “The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep...He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out...he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice….I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me….and I lay down my life for the sheep.” This is easily one of the most famous passages of the New Testament, and I think it is so appealing because it speaks of comfort, protection, of the importance of being cared for and loved. And also of the idea of sacrifice (of both shepherds and sheep), a particularly apropos meditation for the season of Lent.
Written by Stephanie Barr
I am the life skills teacher at Harrison High School and my husband Tim and I enjoy puttering in our garden, serving our cats, and bird-watching along the Buffalo River when we are not fleeing to Fayetteville for its walking trails, book stores and of course for St. Paul's.